


enrollment

by deniigiq



Series: electric sheep [5]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Androids, Artificial Intelligence, Gen, M/M, karen and jessica make chaos out of order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 15:19:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13906803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “Hello, this is Advancement Technical Institute. Registrar’s office, Karen Page speaking. How can I help you?”Karen sounds like buttercups in a meadow, she’s probably America epitomized, amber waves of grain and all, and if he weren’t about to choke on a thousand lies, Foggy would probably have flirted a bit.





	enrollment

**Author's Note:**

> people have been asking about karen, so here she is. This takes place 3 days after advancement.  
> I would strongly recommend that you read the previous chapters before this one, but you do you, boo.

Matt woke up.

His head felt fuzzy and his hands and fingers tingled like he’d slept on them all night. They were cold. He couldn’t quite remember falling asleep.

Wait.

Holy _shit_. Holy _fuck._ He rocketed himself off the floor he was laying on, reaching out, grasping for a wall, for something, for anything. He pushed, stretching his senses out as far as he could. There was a buzzing in his ears—no, in the back of his head, right between the last vertebra and center of the occipital bone—which hummed over everything. It was getting louder. He felt his eyes widening but he still couldn’t see. There was a beating in his chest, thundering. It was the only thing he could hear over the screaming white noise.

“F-Foggy?” He called, ragged. Like his throat was dry. Who—Who was--?

“Foggy!” He called again, reaching 30% volume and 78% desperation.

That thundering felt bigger. It was growing with the noise; he felt it throbbing in his neck. Like it was pulsating there. Except it couldn’t have been. The screaming white noise throbbed in time with the thunder. He knew this feeling.

“FOGGY!” He screamed into the din. Desperation at 93%.

 

 

“What do you mean he’s _gone_?” Foggy croaked in his doorway. Ernst, George, and Maiko stood before him in various states of panic and dress.

“We—Professor Rosen called—He’s—He was at his station when I left—I don’t—“ Ernst gasped. Foggy, horrified, snapped his head to George and Maiko for clarity. Maiko looked like her body wanted to puke and the only thing keeping that from happening was sheer willpower. George’s eyeliner was smeared all over her eyelids. They all looked so small, so saturated, without their lab-coats.

“He’s gone,” George said lowly, “He was there yesterday; he was fine. He was there today, all day. But Rosen went in at, like, 1:30 because he’s a fucking nightmare of an insomniac and Matt was gone. He just—it’s like he just walked out.”

Foggy stared at the three of them, mouth open, trying to swallow breaths and make the words make meaning in his head.

“Come in, let me get my shoes,” he said. “Did you—has anyone?” He didn’t even know what he was asking. George seemed to get it, though. She and Ernst and Maiko crowded around him and he dropped onto his bed and fumbled his sneakers onto his feet. His hands shook.

“We have him on video. On the lab security camera. He woke up. He adjusted and then he just walked out. We don’t know how. He didn’t touch anything. He left the lab minutes—just _minutes_ —before Rosen came in. But Rose didn’t see him—couldn’t find him. He freaked out and tried all the labs he could. He woke up Dr. Liu and Dr. Chabot. They put the lab on lockdown and told the campus and the police. We can’t find him. His chip. Foggy, his chip isn’t working.”

Foggy stared at the very intelligent people in front of him.

“What do you think is happening?” He asked, suddenly aware of how calm and steady his voice was.

“They took him,” Ernst said, staring straight into Foggy’s eyes with his own; they were clear and so was his intuition. “Advancement took him.”

“Why?” Foggy asked as George barked “We don’t know that.”

“He said too much,” Ernst said.

“Jesus, fuck.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to go,” Maiko declared, still pale as a ghost, “ _Now._ ”

Foggy hurriedly tied on his shoes and grabbed his keys. The four of them flew down the stairs and half-sprinted across the street-lit campus to the lab.

 

 

Foggy had watched enough horror movies to know that any educational institution was a deathtrap at night. He’d also watched enough television to know that the exact place you don’t want to be in that deathtrap was the fucking lab, but there they were.

It was hell to get into the building with all of the sudden ID checking and demands to state their purpose. When they finally did get past the uniformed grunts outside, there was a whole team of uniformed people awkwardly, angerly stumbling around the usual lab-coats in the main lab. Some of them wore blue, some black, and some, bizarrely, dark orange.

“They’re the bot regulators,” Maiko whispered to Foggy as they kept their heads down and walked quickly towards Ernst’s station. It was surreal to be in the lab at night, with everything still lit up the same as during the day. It was as if time didn’t pass in there. Every one of Ernst’s IT bots stood in place on their vertical gurneys, eyes closed, blue shirts and gray tights saturated in the florescent lighting. Matt’s little nook was the only one which stood innocently empty. Like an egg plucked from the end of a carton. “They’re the ones who process the paperwork and keep track of whose bodies are used for which bots.”

Foggy craned his neck back, squinting suspiciously and focusing his all on listening hard. He could just barely make out what they were saying.

“—don’t have a Murdock on record—”

“—not in the system. How are we supposed to—”

“—dangerous? Give me a number outta ten here, with ten as serial killer and one as—”

“What the fuck. What are they even supposed to do?” Foggy hissed. Maiko and Ernst raised eyebrows while George raised her palms.

“Probably hunt him down and decommission him,” she offered. Foggy gave them his own skeptical eyebrow.

“Yeah, because that’s totally gonna work given that they can’t even track him.”

No one had anything to say to that.

“Whatever, we don’t got time for cops. Matt’s gone. He’s gone. But he doesn’t have the extra processors, so he couldn’t have decided to go on his own, right? He must have gotten an order or something, right?” Foggy asked, talking fast, but still feeling the calm he’d felt back at his apartment. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe this was crisis-Foggy. Well, that was good to know.

“Right,” Ernst said, nodding. “As long as he’s android-Matt, he needs to have received an order. It should be on his logs; he doesn’t need to be here for me to check those.”

“Perfect, can we use his logs to see if he’s getting orders from the same place? Maybe we could use those to find where he went.”

“That’s all fine,” George interrupted, glaring over her shoulder at the officers poking around Ernst’s desk, “But how are we gonna do that without these morons getting there first?”

“Hello,” a pleasant voice intoned towards their frantic whispering. The four broke apart slightly to see a man standing there, a slim-looking white guy with curly blond hair. He wore a black suit with a huge vest. It looked a little like…Kevlar? Foggy wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Kevlar in real life, but he was absolutely certain that, that was Kevlar. He couldn’t see any official-looking agency patches on the guy’s get up, though. Christ, did someone call the secret service? This situation couldn’t possibly be secret-service level. Matt wasn’t about to murder to president…was he?

“Hello,” Kevlar said again.

Maiko gave a hasty little wave and the guy lit up. He didn’t come any closer to their circle, though.

“Hello,” he said a third time.

“Hi,” Ernst said, voicing everyone’s annoyance and confusion, “Can we, uh, help you?”

“My name is Danny.”

Foggy’s skin itched. Danny’s combat boots’ grip was worn almost smooth. Their posse turned back inward slightly to have a silent debate on the merits of answering or ignoring him. He waited patiently until Maiko’s bleeding heart won out.

“Hi Danny,” Maiko said gently. “Um, what can we--Are you with--?” She gestured vaguely behind her towards the various uniforms still arguing over threat levels. Danny didn’t even look at them.

“My name is Danny,” he said, unhelpfully. But then, more helpfully, “I’m here to give a message.”

He said it loud enough that a handful of the uniforms stopped their chattering and looked their way. Several others then followed suit and gestured harshly at their colleagues to do so as well _._ Foggy felt the hair standing up on the back of his head. The echoes of chatter died away until the only sound was the buzzing of the lights overhead.

“A message? W-what message?” Maiko asked, clearly regretting every syllable. Danny continued to smile at her.

“My name is Danny. I’m here to give a message,” he repeated, inflection exactly the same.

“He’s a bot,” George whispered.

“What is the message, Danny?” _Is Timmy stuck in the well?_ Foggy’s brain hysterically supplied.

“Message: Conditions violated. Subject recall. Apologies for the inconvenience,” Danny told them earnestly.

Perfect. Foggy had always wanted to be featured on one of those ‘mysterious deaths’ shows. Who needs a grave when you could be forever memorialized through Youtube? Before he could properly ruminate on what terrible, ominous way Danny was going to kill everyone, though, an elbow wedged itself into his ribs and directed his attention to George, who raised her eyebrows and bounced her irises between Danny and Matt’s empty station. Foggy’s own eyebrows sky rocketed and he nudged Ernst’s elbow to get his attention.

“We understand. Thank you, Danny,” Ernst told him gently. Foggy could feel Maiko trembling next to him. Danny cocked his head in their direction, god, just like Matt.

“Confirmed.” He gave a curt nod and then started walking towards the entrance to the lab with a sure stride.

“Danny?” Maiko called after him. The word echoed in the room. He stopped, stock still, several paces away from the door. He didn’t turn around like Foggy thought he would.

“Danny, can you please come back here? We aren’t done talking to you,” she said. Danny twitched, but didn’t turn around.

Foggy saw, out of the corner of his eye, one of the uniforms slowly reaching for a taser. Danny unfroze and then resumed his walking toward the door, pace ramped up to eleven.

“Danny, this is an order!” Maiko shouted. “Stop!”

He stopped in the entrance. He processed for the longest ten seconds in Foggy’s life, then looked straight at Maiko.

“Danny, can you tell us your name?” She pressed.

“My name is Danny.”

“Your real name—your, uh, old name. Tell us your old name.”

He processed the request, then jerked a little. Then processed and jerked a little again. It was like watching Matt shocking himself at the socket. It was as if he wanted to say something, but he kept interrupting himself—oh god, George was right, he and Matt were the _same_. What if this was his way of saying he didn’t want this; he was scared.

He stiffened one final time and then vanished through the entrance.

 

 

Or he would have, had someone not barked a signal. Seven guys in blue and orange threw themselves at Danny, effectively knocking him to the floor and pinning his limbs. Danny didn’t fight it, he simply let himself go down. He showed no sign of pain or even inconvenience. Once flat on his back and piled with humans clinging to his every limb, he moved his head around a bit, looking confused. Then he laid back and went still.

Evidently, this was not what the blue or orange people had expected either. After a moment of silence, a few shifted and crawled over him to peer at his face. Danny didn’t move. Two of the uniforms climbed off completely and the rest hauled him over onto his front and started to handcuff his wrists. Foggy wasn’t sure what the hell handcuffs were going to do against android strength, but sure, whatever made them feel better. To his right he saw George claw her hands in their direction in similar exasperation.

One of the officers in orange whipped out a tablet and a connecting cable. She fitted one end of the cable into the tablet, while one of the other officers tried to pull Danny’s vest down enough to get to his neck ports. Danny rag-dolled until she connected the port.

Then, in what Foggy would later recall as one of the most surreal moments of his life, Danny screamed and pulled his wrists taut. The handcuffs shattered. Foggy flinched. The scientists in the room, or at least, those who knew what was good for them, flinched as well and backed away from the scene. The officers holding Danny doubled down their efforts, but struggled as he arched his back and managed to cram one knee and then the other beneath him. The tablet in the officer’s hand sparked.

Grunting, he pushed his forehead to the floor and screamed again. The sound shot up and down Foggy’s spine. Maiko grabbed his wrist. One of Danny’s hands started to fucking _glow._

Foggy’s _oh shit_ hindbrain kicked in at the same time as Maiko’s and he snagged the back of Ernst’s collar just as she threw her other arm around George’s waist. They hauled ass to a corner at other side of the room where the big lab met the wall just in time for Danny to rip his arm back and slam it against the floor.

The movement sent a shockwave through the room. Desks shook, chairs rattled, the racks of bots slid back away from the impact. A few wires dropped out of cubby holes. The officers previously lying all over Danny lay unmoving at his feet as he stood. He shook his hand to get the remnants of linoleum off of it, then stopped and turned his head towards the dream team’s corner. The shadows on his face shifted as the lights above swung. He looked like he was underwater for a moment, then he swung his whole body and walked, no, slunk, towards them. Fluid, predatory.

He dropped into a crouch in front of them, the light from his fist fading and barely noticeable under the swinging lights. He stared at Foggy, his pupils shrunk despite the lack of light, dilated until almost the entire iris appeared black, then shrunk again to a more normal size. He was processing, collecting visual data, Foggy realized.

Then Danny reached down and carefully tipped Maiko’s head up until she met his eyes.

He nodded. Stood. And walked away.

 

 

The lab stayed on lockdown. No one in, no one out. No work could be done, no one could access the server. Matt stayed gone. Foggy stayed frantic and heartbroken.

He studied until the text blurred, but it was hard to tell if it was from exhaustion or from the emotion which flooded his body when he accidently looked into the corner with the guitar. In the days before his disappearance, Ernst had finally let Matt go back to Foggy’s room, where he’d stayed and periodically requested music.

They’d been making plans to find Elektra, as human-Matt told them to before he got overwhelmed and turned off. With a name like that, she wasn’t hard to find. Elektra Natchios. She went missing two years ago. She was the heiress to some big money and her family was devastated. They’d organized a big search campaign which still had occasional meet-ups. She was gorgeous. And perfect for Matt, Foggy realized with a sinking feeling. 

He drowned those thoughts with the fact that his friend had been tortured because he was too ethical, which was surprisingly effective, although now every time he reflected on Matt, he got an extra pang of guilt for Danny.

The guy was a kid; Foggy wasn’t that old, but Danny was just a kid. He had a motherfucking glowing fist, yeah, that was terrifying and no, Foggy wasn’t about to try to understand, but he was there, struggling in that shell of a body just like Matt. He had wanted to give Maiko his name, he definitely had, so maybe he was sentient like Matt. Maybe they were all sentient like Matt.

He moped until Marci actually beat him over the head with a binder and told him to ‘get a goddamn grip, Nelson,’ and then he picked himself up and decided that lab or no lab, he was going to find these people and…well he’d figure out Step Two after Step One. Building planes as they fly, yada yada etc. etc.

He pounded on Ernst’s door until he cracked it open. The guy looked terrible, which, considering that Matt was technically in his charge and that his home away from home was completely inaccessible to all university staff and students, was understandable.

“Hi buddy,” he sang with false cheer, “Wanna go on an adventure?”

Ernst groaned and dropped his head against the door frame.

“No.”

“Well, it sucks to be you. Get your shoes.”

 

 

When you’re in grad school, you forget that people exist outside of grad school. Meeting up with Maiko and George (having dragged Ernst with him) off campus was kind of like seeing your elementary school teacher in public.

Maiko’s puffy jacket was baby pink with strawberry print on the inside and George’s hair and eyeliner were startlingly neat. They all ordered coffee and claimed a table in the back of the café.

Maiko sighed. Foggy sighed. George put her head in her hands.

“What are we gonna do?” she asked the table in general. “Now that we know there’s more Matts, we’ve gotta do something.”

“We don’t actually know if there are more Matts,” Ernst said, playing the devil’s advocate as usual.

“Danny is definitely a Matt,” Maiko sighed.

“Elektra is definitely a Matt, too,” Foggy added.

They fell silent. The milk steamer behind the counter made a godawful screech.

“Okay,” George tried, “We’ve got three Matts; they are all—what did he call himself? Wild cards? So they all probably have some kind of special powers.” She stopped just as the steamer halted its shrieking. “What I am—Am I saying this outside my head? This feels like an inside-head thought.”

Foggy frowned and thought and played with the lid of his coffee.

“Okay, maybe if we figure out their powers then we can figure out where they might be? They’d have to be kept in a pretty, uh, high-maintenance place if they can take out like half a SWAT team by themselves like Danny.” Ernst stared at him.

“That wasn’t a SWAT team—"

“Is he saying inside-head thoughts too? I need someone to verify I’m not crazy,” George said, blinking owlishly and clutching her coffee to her chest.

“You’re not crazy,” Maiko moaned.

The table fell silent again. Someone with a death-wish at the counter ordered five shots of expresso and a five-hour energy drink.

“Suppose that we do find out where they are,” Ernst postulated, fidgeting with the napkin box, “what do we do then? Call in the bot regs? That’s not gonna stop a war, if there really is one happening.”

Foggy chewed his lip and furrowed his brow.

“Well, maybe we can’t stop the war. But maybe if we take the wild cards out of the equation, that’ll even the playing field and they’ll just beat each other to death sooner?” he offered.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be bothered about the war?” Maiko piped in, “It’s like the mob. You can’t stop the mob by getting rid of the key players, there are always people who want to take their place.” George hummed in agreement.

“Do people get out of the mob?” Ernst asked like the sweet, Vermont summer child he was.

“Oh yeah, you know, a little jailtime, a little therapy, a new apartment--” George told him.

“No,” Foggy corrected before Ernst, in his innocence and optimism, believed her, “I mean, most people don’t. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t. And if we get them out now, though, when the war ends, they’ll be safe.”

It was decided.

“Okay, so powers,” George said.

“Right, Danny has some kind of fist-thing,”

“Matt has some kind of sense-thing,”

“We don’t know anything about Elektra,” Maiko pouted.

“Well we know that she’s rich and smart and gorgeous,” George mused. “She could be a succubus.”

The table judged George very strongly.

“I’m just saying.”

 “If I were harboring a guy who could make mini-earthquakes, a guy who could sense everything, and a potential succubus, where would I put them?” Foggy mused.

“Underground.”

“Not near water.”

“Let’s say I have even more um, people-things. Like a mole-man or some kind of Captain America guy.”

The table froze in horror and then crowded inwards.

“Do you think Captain America is a bot?” Maiko whispered.

“No one in their right mind would give a bot tits like that,” George whispered back. “Although now, thinking about it, I might.”

“ _George_ ,” Ernst gasped, scandalized, “You can’t talk about Captain America’s _tits._ ”

“ _Anyways_ ,” Foggy drawled, trying to drag them all back to the point, “If I were harboring a fuckload of super-powered bots and a bot-making system, I would need a lab to repair them and a whole lot of housing for my baby-bots—potential-bots—whatever. I mean, Matt said that they take your heart and stuff, but he didn’t say they did it all at once. So, there’s got to be some kind of hospital-slash-lab-slash-apartment-complex that they’re all living in.”

“Hogwarts,” Ernst said, looking like he would rather drink battery acid than continue this conversation, “You are asking for Hogwarts in the state of New York.”

“Or you know, Riker’s. A prison.” George added contemplatively.

“Maybe something a little less suspicious?” Foggy said.

“Like what? A church?” Maiko asked.

The table stared at her.

“Why a church?” Foggy asked.

“Well, you said Hogwarts, I thought cathedral.”

“No, but wait. Churches have hella services.” George said, sitting up straighter.

“They’ve got all kinds of buildings and property,” Foggy agreed, eyes widening.

“We are _not_ looking for a church,” Ernst hissed.

 

 

So they’re looking for a church. Not too big and not too small. They call all the churches they can and surreptitiously ask about their opportunities for advancement. Foggy has been referred to no less than 9 retirement homes and 4 seminaries, and he’s just about decided he’s called all the churches in Manhattan when he hits on St. Michael’s in Hell’s Kitchen.

St. Michael’s, which he’d actually walked by every day of his life and had mentally dubbed ‘the church with the bench out front,’ is really old and its priest is called Father Lantom. The size of the congregation is conveyed through the fact that the Father has a shift at the front desk.

Father Lantom, however, hears the word ‘advancement’ and says, “Oh the technical school? One of mine went there some years ago.”

Father Lantom happens to have the school’s brochure with a phone number, as apparently evil robot organizations like to recruit from the spiritual, and tells Foggy to ask for “Page, bless her. She works in the registrar’s office.”

Foggy thanks him a thousand times and promises to drop by one day and have coffee with the old man. He throws down the phone and hurls himself in the living room to triumphantly rally his troops. They celebrate with a rousing cheer.

Foggy paces in his room for five minutes, psyching himself up to call Page before George throws a pillow at his face and tells him to “just get it over with, damnit.”

He dials the number with shaking hands and turns the phone on speaker so that they can all hear. One ring. Two rings. Three rings.

“Hello, this is Advancement Technical Institute. Registrar’s office, Karen Page speaking. How can I help you?”

Karen sounds like buttercups in a meadow, she’s probably America epitomized, amber waves of grain and all, and if he weren’t about to choke on a thousand lies, Foggy would probably have flirted a bit.

“Hi Karen, My name is Franklin Warner, I’m from Columbia University Registrar’s office,” he says in his best customer service voice. He worked for one whole summer in his undergrad’s registrar’s office, so really it’s two half-lies mashed together. Does it count as a whole lie if it’s two half-truths?

“I’m looking to verify the enrollment of one of our students. He’s saying that he attended your institution, but his transcripts haven’t arrived and it’s been quite a while. He’s had this problem three times now, and I’m sure you can understand why I’m a little concerned. Can you help me with that?”

There was a sigh on the other side of the line which told Foggy that she dealt with shit like this all the time, probably for minimum wage. If he ever met Karen Page, he was going to buy her a coffee or six.

“Of course, Mr. Warner. Can you please verify the student’s name, Social Security number, and date of birth?”

George had the information up on her screen--which damn girl, shouldn’t that be encrypted—and Foggy read it off. They heard the clacking of a keyboard on the other side of the line. A pause. More clacking. A pause.

“Mr. Murdock? Religious studies?” She asked. Foggy’s heartrate shot up and Maiko pumped a fist in success.

“That’s the one. Do you guys do electronic transcripts or can you send me a copy of his certificate of completion?” Foggy asked.

“Sure thing, just let me look. Hold on a minute please.” Foggy heard Karen put the phone down and a scraping noise told him that she’d just missed the hold button. The four of them looked at each other, barely breathing. Tinny, Karen’s voice filtered through the voice.

“Jess, JESS.” She barked sharply.

“Huh?” answered a tinny, clearly-just-sleeping voice.

“For real? Whatever. I’ve got a weird feeling about something. Some guy from Columbia just called asking for Murdock’s certificate.”

"Kay, so send him the certificate. I went out and bought an embossed gold sticker for that guy, you know that? That’s how dedicated I am to this job.”

“I’m not even going to touch that. I thought Murdock graduated?”

“He did. Hence the gold sticker.”

“But he’s enrolled. I just checked, he’s enrolled in courses again.” Foggy’s breath caught in his chest.

“Nah. Girl. I formatted his certificate myself.”

“But—”

“Maybe he just re-enrolled. He’s religious studies, right? You know, them Catholics—”

“Jess, it’s weird. I thought Murdock went missing. Didn’t his notes box say he was working for a law firm or something?”

“Maybe he went un-missing. Or some idiot fucked up the excel sheet again.”

“Jess, the only other people with access to that sheet are you and Hogarth.”

“Alright, I’ll take it. I’m an idiot.”

“For the love of—where’s the copy?”

“Huh?”

“The copy. I make a copy of all of the certificates.”

“Sorry, Kare. As much as I would love to continue this conversation, I’ve got a call coming in.”

“Your headset isn’t even on.”

“Hello? Mr. Lincoln? Sorry didn’t hear you there, my co-worker’s making a fucking racket.”

“Jess, you can’t say ‘fucking’ to a caller.”

“SORRY MR.  LINCOLN, I SAID I CAN’T HEAR YOU, MY CO-WORKER’S A FUCKING SQUARE.”

Foggy shook with his effort not to laugh. Six coffees, this woman deserved six coffees.

“Shit,” Karen’s voice said softly when she realized she hadn’t hit the hold button, “Hello Mr. Warner?”

“Hi, I’m still here,” Foggy said, desperate to keep the smile out of his voice.

“I’m so sorry about that. So, so sorry. Totally unprofessional.”

Foggy laughed.

“It’s alright, it happens to the best of us. So that certificate?”

“Um,” Karen said gently, in her most sympathetic ‘you are going to be very angry’ tone, “It seems that Mr. Murdock’s certificate of completion has been misplaced. Can I send you a transcript instead?”

“No problem, that’ll work,” Foggy assured her and then rattled off the fake email Ernst helped him set up.

His computer pinged a moment later with an email notification.

“Just got it, thank you so much, Karen,” he said into the phone. “Just out of curiosity, I’ve got a few other cases like this, do you think you could take a look for me?”

Karen shuffled something on her side, “Sure. Names?”

“Elektra Natchios and Danny—what’s that guy’s name, I can’t ever remember—”

“Rand? That Danny?” Foggy grimaced. Maiko started to do a google search on her laptop.

“That’s the one.”

“Okay, just one moment please.” She set the phone down again and hit the hold button properly this time.

“Daniel Rand went missing twelve _years_ ago,” Maiko whispered in horror.

“Of course he did,” Foggy groaned.

“There’s only kid pictures, but that’s definitely him.” Maiko continued, holding the laptop up so the others could see. And yep, those curls were pretty striking. Ernst put his head in his hands.

“Hello? Mr. Warner?” Foggy shifted his attention back to the phone.

“Hi, find them?”

“Um, no. I’m so sorry, Mr. Warner, this doesn’t usually happen. Danny hasn’t graduated yet, so I don’t know why he’s applying to Columbia, but Elektra’s documents should have been sent over last year. I, uh, it seems that they send over the original copies of her documents, so unfortunately I don’t have them.”

Six coffees and like ten shots, he’d buy this girl if he ever met her. She didn’t even know how much information she’d given them.

“Ah, well, that’s unfortunate,” he said, “Well, we’ll double check our records for Miss Natchios, and I guess I’ll send a letter to Mr. Rand so that he can handle it directly with you guys. Thanks Karen.”

“Yeah, that’s great. I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. Please call back if you need anything else.”

He hung up.

 

 

Karen hung up the phone, folded her hands in front of her and glared at the computer. Something was fishy.

“Hey Jess,” she called towards the backroom where her coworker was no doubt creating chaos out of order.

“Yeah?”

“Did you get a call from someone named Colleen today?”

“Jesus, yeah. That girl calls every damn day. She’s nuts. Keeps saying that we kidnapped her boyfriend or something.”

Karen leaned forward, squinting at the excel sheet on the screen in front of her. She’d updated those rosters yesterday. She didn’t recognize some of the names though, and someone had fucked up her highlighting system.

“Didn’t some other lady call a few weeks back saying the same thing?”

“What the nurse? Yeah, but I guess she finally took the hint. Haven’t heard from her in a bit.”

“Huh.” Karen leaned back and crossed her legs. Jess poked her head out of the backroom’s door.

“I don’t like that ‘huh.’”

“I mean—”

“Oh no, you don’t. I ain’t being dragged back into your conspiracy shit.”

“Just hear me out,” Karen pleaded, all big blue eyes.

“I ain’t.”

“So isn’t it weird that we have religious studies at a technical school?”

“Nope.”

“And like two people call us accusing us of some kind of kidnapping thing?”

“Uh-uh.”                                     

“Like, one I could understand, but two? Saying the same thing? That’s pretty odd.”

“It’s New York, honey. That’s how things are.”

“How about the fact that a guy who went missing a year ago re-enrolled yesterday, Elektra’s been here for two whole years and still doesn’t have a file, and Danny’s gone from yellow to blue on my roster?”

“I am _not_ fucking listening.”

“Doesn’t that seem kinda fishy to you?”

Jess slammed a record cabinet drawer closed.

“Girl, this is a for-profit college, what do you expect? Of course shit is fishy. The whole concept of a for-profit college is fishy. We’re gonna get sued eventually, I’m honestly shocked it hasn’t happened yet.”

“Jess?”

“I am not talking to you.”

“Do you think that this place—”

“NOT TALKING. TAKING MY FIFTEEN.”

The office door slammed with a cheerful tinkle from their new bell.

 

                                                                                                                                                                            


End file.
